The University of Zurich’s Center for Islamic and Middle Eastern Legal Studies has announced the launch of an open access, peer-reviewed journal titled “Electronic Journal of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law”

The Electronic Journal of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law (EJIMEL) is a publication by the Center for Islamic and Middle Eastern Legal Studies (CIMELS) at the Faculty of Law, University of Zurich, Switzerland, founded in summer 2012. EJIMEL strives to contribute to the understanding of the large geographical area composing the Middle East guided by the awareness that this region has obtained a key position on the world stage over the last decades and keeps evolving fast. Covering a region which is rich in diversity and heritage, EJIMEL individuates itself by laying a special focus on the multifaceted relations between Islam and national and international law orders over the course of time and from different points of view. Furthermore, EJIMEL aims to contribute to the on-going highly topical debates of regional and global interest in the field of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law, such as, e.g., Democratization, Gender and Human Rights, and to highlight interdependencies of Middle Eastern law orders with other jurisdictions worldwide. The editors aim is to foster a vivid debate focusing on the correlation between Islam as a religion with a distinct body of legal norms and the paramount principles and guarantees of current international law, as well as to inquire into key phenomena in Middle Eastern law orders such as, e.g., “Re-Islamisation”, which have influenced both codifications and scholarly discourse in a significant way.

From the journal’s Open Access Philosophy

In line with this objective, EJIMEL follows the Open Access standard and published articles are freely available online and for download. Whereas authors retain the copyright, they grant EJIMEL the right of publication and archiving with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

These Guidelines provide an account of the development
of Open Access, why it is important and desirable, how to
attain it, and the design and effectiveness of policies.

Open Access is a new way of disseminating research
information, made possible because of the World Wide
Web.

…

Open Access is achieved by two main routes:
◾ Open Access journals, the ‘gold’ route to Open Access,
are a particularly successful model in some disciplines,
and especially in some geographical communities
◾ The ‘green’ route, via repositories can capture more
material, faster, if the right policies are put in place

…

The benefits of Open Access are summarized as follows:
◾ Open Access improves the speed, efficiency and
efficacy of research
◾ Open Access is an enabling factor in interdisciplinary
research
◾ Open Access enables computation upon the research
literature
◾ Open Access increases the visibility, usage and impact
of research
◾ Open Access allows the professional, practitioner and
business communities, and the interested public, to
benefit from research

Our scientific body of knowledge is built upon data, which is carefully collected, analyzed, and presented in scholarly reports. We are now witnessing a dramatic shift in our relationship to data: where researchers once managed discrete, controllable building blocks of knowledge, they must now contend with a tsunami of information that paradoxically feeds the growing scientific output while simultaneously crushing researchers with its weight. Numerous national and international initiatives, projects, and working groups have been established to address the data dilemma from multiple angles, including recent Requests for Information from the US Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and a US White House announcement of spending US$200 million on “Big Data”. … Libraries have traditionally been the place to acquire information; now they have become the place to learn how to manage it. The eagle-i Consortium, a collaborative resource sharing network, is designed to address both the researcher’s data-sharing needs and the modern library’s new mandate to facilitate and accelerate the discovery of new knowledge. The launch and development of this initiative provides a vivid demonstration of the challenges that researchers, libraries, and institutions face in making their data available to others.

Main Theme:
International Conference on Access to Legal Information & Research in the Digital Age
(29 Feb-02 March 2012)

Sub Themes:
* Legal Education and Research: Current Development in Digital Age
* Role of ICT in Development of Comparative Jurisprudence
* International Law and Globalization in Digital Age
* Current Trends in Legal Publishing :IPR Issues & Challenges
* Licensing for Digital Resources
* Best Practices of Information & Knowledge Management in Libraries
* Open Access Initiatives and Scholarly Publishing
* Free Access to Law Movement: National & International Perspective
* Access, Authorization and Authentication of Digital Web Information
* Role, Relevancy and Research: Online Legal Databases

Judy Janes and Marissa Andrea just published a good article on open access law journals. Their article, “One Journal at a Time,” includes a few paragraphs providing “a brief history of open access.” In addition, they comment upon how “the success of RSS feeds, SSRN alerts and SMARTCILP/CLJC email updates has further accelerated the transition to Open Access journals.”

. . . As more journals become available on the Internet through an initiative called Open Access, published legal scholarship — once only available in print form from law libraries, or online through proprietary databases ­— will reach a wider audience. This is a movement not only benefiting practicing attorneys, but historians, scholars and members of the public with legal research interests, who will be able to access legal scholarship by simply googling a topic.

The Italian Journal of Public Law IJPL was established in 2009 by a small group of scholars based in several Italian universities, with the encouragement and support of scholars from other countries.

IJPL has the ambition to serve as a bridge between the Italian and other legal cultures and therefore encourages the submission of studies, comments and review articles from lawyers and social scientists from all over the world.

IJPL is interested in publishing pieces in all areas of public law, especially with regard to administrative and constitutional law. Both comparative and theoretical approaches are particularly welcomed.

The latest issue of the “German Law Journal” has an article about this journal , which includes links to other online Italian legal journals.

Giancinto della Cananea. On Bridging Legal cultures: The Italian Journal of Public Law.

The University of Göttingen in Germany has published a new open access journal titled: Göttingen Journal of International Law. Contents include articles, recent developments, and book reviews. Contenst are in English. . Vielen Dank to our friends in Germany. Hat tip to Jacob Katz Cogan.

Nice to see some public international law research available for free. The December 12, 2008 issue of the Times Literary Supplement puts law book price increases in historical perspective. John Hudson’s review of “Medieval Origins of the Legal Profession” includes the folowing on page 28: “In Bologna, around 1300 AD, James Brundage tells us, a new law book cost on average 35 Bolognese pounds, more than some houses.”